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It must be someone's fault
Feb. 9th, 2009 03:52 pmHumanity has a long and ignoble history in looking for scapegoats. It seems that society has a hard time with saying "it's nobody's fault". The latest bushfires in Victoria have brought it out in full flow, with an added dash of The Brothers Grimm.
The arsonists who caused these fires are "mass murderers" says the Australian prime minister. A statistic is reeled out from the Australian Institute of Criminology that half of all the nations "20,000 to 30,000 bushfires annually" are started deliberately or are suspected of being started deliberately. Hmm, "suspected of"? -- that gives researchers a lot of latitude. A bit like "Nine out of ten people working in Hollywood are Communists or are suspected of being Communists". Oh yeah, we can fly with this one.
But, let's face it, it takes a real man to shrug his shoulders and say "Jeez, this thing is bigger than politicians and it's bigger than me. No-one's to blame. Nature is a more powerful force than us".
And there's the key, because man's long history has been one of trying to tame nature, to bend it to our will. To admit defeat at the hands of nature is far harder for most of us and, I suspect, for Australians in particular — a people forged in the battle to tame an unfriendly land — than it is to blame human "baddies".
This "research" into these unknown arsonists (although I suspect one or two nutters will eventually be caught and villified) is, needless to say, jumble-full of bad-science pseudo-psychologists (with, unfortunately, very real qualifications) listing the reasons that people start fires deliberately -- without at any point proving that such people are as large in number as is claimed (I mean, 15,000 deliberate fires a year? That's, er, either 1000 people starting an average of more than one a month -- which isn't two a month, Sunday Express Chief Editor -- or 10,000 starting one or two fires a year. Since your normal peak arson period isn't that great, it looks to me that they are either asking for 1000 arsonists striking at the rate of one a day, or 15,000 arsonists starting a fire deliberately every time the wood got dry enough.
And what about the really dumb compulsive arsonists who have a go even if it is raining?
The "unknown baddie", the ghost in the closet, the BogeyMan. Oh yes, we still need him, we still need those myths, because to throw away those myths is to accept the existence of a far stronger power -- Nature.
Those people talking about stopping our determined attempts to wipe out humanity through over-consumption could do worse than to point to the Forest Fires in Victoria. "Listen you klutzes", they should shout. "This is what it's going to be like if we carry on fucking with nature, except it will be a gazillion times more widespread. Look how badly we are coping with this. How do you think we will cope when massive climatic changes start happening everywhere?"
Although the politicians won't listen. They'll just blame the arsonists.
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The arsonists who caused these fires are "mass murderers" says the Australian prime minister. A statistic is reeled out from the Australian Institute of Criminology that half of all the nations "20,000 to 30,000 bushfires annually" are started deliberately or are suspected of being started deliberately. Hmm, "suspected of"? -- that gives researchers a lot of latitude. A bit like "Nine out of ten people working in Hollywood are Communists or are suspected of being Communists". Oh yeah, we can fly with this one.
But, let's face it, it takes a real man to shrug his shoulders and say "Jeez, this thing is bigger than politicians and it's bigger than me. No-one's to blame. Nature is a more powerful force than us".
And there's the key, because man's long history has been one of trying to tame nature, to bend it to our will. To admit defeat at the hands of nature is far harder for most of us and, I suspect, for Australians in particular — a people forged in the battle to tame an unfriendly land — than it is to blame human "baddies".
This "research" into these unknown arsonists (although I suspect one or two nutters will eventually be caught and villified) is, needless to say, jumble-full of bad-science pseudo-psychologists (with, unfortunately, very real qualifications) listing the reasons that people start fires deliberately -- without at any point proving that such people are as large in number as is claimed (I mean, 15,000 deliberate fires a year? That's, er, either 1000 people starting an average of more than one a month -- which isn't two a month, Sunday Express Chief Editor -- or 10,000 starting one or two fires a year. Since your normal peak arson period isn't that great, it looks to me that they are either asking for 1000 arsonists striking at the rate of one a day, or 15,000 arsonists starting a fire deliberately every time the wood got dry enough.
And what about the really dumb compulsive arsonists who have a go even if it is raining?
The "unknown baddie", the ghost in the closet, the BogeyMan. Oh yes, we still need him, we still need those myths, because to throw away those myths is to accept the existence of a far stronger power -- Nature.
Those people talking about stopping our determined attempts to wipe out humanity through over-consumption could do worse than to point to the Forest Fires in Victoria. "Listen you klutzes", they should shout. "This is what it's going to be like if we carry on fucking with nature, except it will be a gazillion times more widespread. Look how badly we are coping with this. How do you think we will cope when massive climatic changes start happening everywhere?"
Although the politicians won't listen. They'll just blame the arsonists.
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